Investigation of TOP app screenshots in App Store

If you release an app and make screenshots for it, you ask yourself the questions:

Should I do a portrait or album orientation?

Should I use an iPhone? A white or a black one?

Should there be captions on screenshots?

If you do something from the above mentioned, will it affect app featuring by Apple?

In order to find answers to the questions, Appbot company decided to examine 2 app TOPs for iPhone, a free and a paid one, and the apps which Apple featured in the USA. Obviously, it’s only a layer relevant for a period of time and AppStore changes constantly.

Captions

It’s a great method to build a story and boast of your functions.

Is it popular? Incredibly popular.

The majority of successful apps make captions, adding them to screenshots or making inscriptions around them. Apple would obviously be happy if you do this as well.

Phones

Designers like using iPhones on their screenshots.

Some time ago Apple didn’t approve using white phones in marketing materials. So, how many apps use phones, what color and does Apple take it into account while searching fot apps to feature in AppStore?

White phones are slightly more popular than black ones, ⅓ of apps uses phones on their screenshots. Good news is Apple isn’t against it.

Mode

It’s interesting that featured apps have screenshots with landscape mode more often than the apps in TOPs.

Games make up only 30-40% of free and paid charts. But there are more of them among featured apps. Games use landscape mode more often than other apps which explains the shift to a landscape among the selected apps.

So, there are no strict preferences in mode, you can choose whatever suits your app better. Just don’t mix them.

Quantity of screenshots

It’s astonishing but 3% in the TOP has only 3 screenshots (Snapchat, for example).

You should definitely use 5 (at least 4) screenshots for presenting your app.

How Apple does it

Apple likes simple screenshots but it’s not clear how to interpret this fact.

Conclusion

Apple has become more flexible about what to allow and feature (if we judge by AppStore screenshots). Make captions for them, use iPhone frames without a fear of decreasing chances that Apple will love you.

The most important is to experiment and watch what works better for you especially.